Saturday, May 5, 2018

Night Terrors

by Trina

On the night of the 3rd, the nest cam caught this interesting footage. As usual, DH comes in with a kill, feeds the babies, and hops up to sit in the hole. At the one minute mark, she leaves and comes back quickly to feed again. Then, just as she's about to leave the second time, something outside apparently startles her. Here's how she reacts:

I went outside to see if I could tell what was going on but didn't see anything because, well, it was dark. The next morning, though, our local Great Horned Owl was sleeping in a tree not even a full block away, so that may well have been what scared DH. It's both really amazing and really worrisome to have a GHO in the neighborhood. It is, of course, such a treat to have wildlife like that in our busy little downtown neighborhood, but we'll be pretty unhappy if the GHOs eat our beloved WSOs.

When the terrors of the night aren't interrupting normal activities, the parents are in and out of the nest all night long feeding the five hungry little fluffs. In the last couple of days, feedings have been getting increasingly frequent and increasingly frenzied:

In this video, feeding proceeds as usual, and then the babies react to a firecracker: